The Battle of Passchendaele (October-November 1917), the final stage of the Third Battle of Ypres, took place in Flanders, Belgium, during the First World War (1914-18). The aim of the Allied commander in this part of the Western Front, Field Marshal Haig, was to break out of the Ypres salient and recapture key Belgian ports and a railway junction vital to the German Army. After unusually heavy and persistent rains, the battlefield turned into a horrific sea of mud and water-filled shell holes, which reduced the advance to just a few miles. The British and British Empire forces suffered over 250,000 casualties for no strategic gain.
Ypres for the Third Time
WWI's Western Front saw German forces ranged against French, Belgian, and British armies. After the manic first six weeks of the war, when the Battle of the Frontiers and First Battle of the Marne saw great sweeping troop movements, the Western Front settled down to one of more or less static trench warfare. This front stretched from Ypres near the Belgian coast to the Swiss border in the south. There were still major battles, many of which involved hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides, notably the Battle of Verdun (February-December 1916) and the First Battle of the Somme (July-November 1916). None of these battles, though, resulted in a significant strategic gain for either side.
Ypres in Belgium had already been the scene of two major encounters: the First Battle of Ypres (October-November 1914) and the Second Battle of Ypres (April-May 1915). In the summer of 1917, the generals once more looked to the top corner of their field maps and identified Ypres yet again as a place where armies would clash in an attempt to break the deadlock of the Western Front.
Haig's Ypres Plan
Field Marshal Douglas Haig (1861-1928) was still the overall commander of the British Army in France/Belgium, despite being blamed for the carnage of the Somme, where the British suffered 432,000 casualties, half the total force. Haig gained the undesirable moniker of 'the Butcher of the Somme.' In truth, Haig was not a lot different from any of his contemporaries. Generals on both sides were exceedingly slow to grasp that well-embedded machine gunners could utterly destroy an infantry charge across the no man's land that separated trench systems. It is also true that Haig's political overlords did not see fit to remove him.
In 1917, Haig was still dreaming of a major and dramatic breakthrough against the German lines. Haig selected Ypres since an advance here would mean the Allies could reclaim some key ports from the enemy, capture the Roulers railway hub vital to the German lines of supply, bring the German U-boat base at Bruges within range of an attack, and divert pressure on the French armies further south, armies which had been suffering from a collapse in morale and even a mutiny in the spring of 1917.
Haig's plan was for the Second and Fifth British Armies to break out from the Ypres salient and capture the higher ground further east, crucial to dominating the battlefield and permitting a further advance, which could then capture the ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge. If things went well, Haig hoped to push the German Army entirely out of Belgium, and perhaps even win the war. The British prime minister, David Lloyd George (in office 1916-22), was highly sceptical that Haig's plan could work when the Allies had only a small numerical superiority over the German Army in Flanders and parity in terms of artillery. The prime minister was inclined to await the arrival of US troops in Europe before launching an offensive. Crucially, Lloyd George's chief military adviser, General Sir William Robertson, backed Haig's plan.
Battle Begins
The opening stage of the Third Battle of Ypres began on 7 June, when the British advanced to take Messines ridge, crucial before any larger offensive could be launched. Although a successful operation, it did alert the German Fourth Army that something larger was about to begin. The German forces were confident they could hold the main front line since they had spent the previous 12 months turning their positions into veritable fortresses of concrete bunkers and machine gun posts, which were positioned to give each other support with interlocking fire. The British knew this, but they had been busy themselves tunnelling under the German lines and laying deep mines packed with one million pounds (450,000 kg) of high explosives. 3.5 million artillery shells, which included gas shells, were fired at the German positions, and then the mines finally detonated – the explosion was heard in London across the channel. 10,000 German soldiers were killed in this attack. The Second British Army, commanded by General Herbert Plumer (1857-1932), then advanced and took the ridge on 14 June.
After the rare total success of the Messines ridge operation, Haig could now prepare to break out of the salient, but the next move was not made for several weeks, as he reorganised his command structure, a delay that allowed the German Army to strengthen its defences, which were even more formidable than they had been at Messines.
On 11 July, an aerial bombardment was launched against the German lines, and a week later, the artillery barrage began, the heaviest yet seen in the war, when at least triple the number of shells used in the First Battle of the Somme were fired. Indeed, the barrage was excessive, since shells could only do so much damage against the well-protected German positions.
On 31 July, the infantry of the British Second and Fifth Armies, as well as the French First Army, tried to advance, but, as usual, the defenders proved difficult to push back, and the Germans launched repeated small counterattacks using their deeply placed reserves. The British strategy of a 'creeping barrage,' where the artillery kept firing further forward as the infantry progressed, was a good one as it provided a curtain of protection for the men on the ground, Unfortunately for the British, this kind of rolling barrage required both clear weather, so that balloon and aircraft observers could report back on the accuracy of the shell fire, and good ground for the infantry to make their way over at a reasonable speed. Neither of these conditions was available here.
After making only 2 miles (3.2 km) worth of progress, the Allies were stopped in their tracks by heavy rains, which made the already muddy terrain into an ugly, sucking swamp. The water table here was close to the clay and silt surface, which meant that the rainfall was not absorbed but remained on the surface. That surface had been churned up by the artillery barrage, which had destroyed the natural but fragile drainage system in this area of Flanders.
British soldier Charles Carrington describes the flooded battlefield:
We settled down on our objective in a group of shell holes and there we sat for three days. On the second day, it began to rain and rained continuously so that the bog of Passchendaele spread out into a lake. To begin with, we were sitting up to our knees in mud and water, very short of sleep and having just been through this very severe mental strain of the battle itself. After this there was no further fighting. The Germans did not in fact counter-attack us at that point, however they shelled us very scientifically. And on the second and third days we just sat in the mud being very heavily and very systematically shelled with pretty heavy stuff.
(Imperial War Museums)
Another Allied push northwards in mid-August, the Battle of Langermarck, was even less successful than the July offensive. Haig redrew his battle plans, but his objective remained the ridge east of Ypres. From 20 to 25 September, the Allied force, bulked up and given even greater artillery support, advanced on a much narrower front than previously. The dynamic General Plumer was now put in charge of the main attack. A new tactic was employed of 'bite and hold,' which involved making small advances and then digging in and launching a post-battle artillery bombardment to ensure that the newly gained slice of territory (typically only 3,000 yards/2,750 metres in depth) was not simply retaken by the next enemy counterattack as had usually happened in previous offensives. Another of Plumer's innovations was to use his infantry in small teams, with each one containing a man specialised in the use of a particular weapon, such as rifle grenades, machine guns, and marksman rifles. This encounter was the Battle of Menin Road Ridge. British and French air support helped push the Germans back. Drier weather also greatly helped the advance. The lessons learnt here would benefit the Allies for the rest of the war.
By the first days of October, the Menin ridge and two others had been reached, but again, the weather turned against Haig. The field marshal decided to press on anyway, perhaps against the advice of his own commanders in the field and certainly mistaken in his own firm belief that German morale was about to crack. What followed was the utter carnage of first the battle at Poelcapelle and then the battle to take the village of Passchendaele.
Taking Ypres Ridge
The attack to take the Ypres ridge and Passchendaele began on 12 October. The Australian and New Zealand forces involved could make little headway against the German defences, partly because they had been sent in the wrong direction due to poor communications. In addition, the ground was still terribly boggy, tanks could gain no purchase in the mud – 300 became stuck, and the same was true for horses and artillery pieces. Infantry soldiers drowned if, weighted down with their equipment, they strayed from the wooden duckboards, planks, or sunken food crates laid down to create some means of crossing the quagmire. William Collins, a stretcher-bearer, describes just how deadly the mud could be:
It was a nightmare, because all you had was a couple of duckboards side by side and either side of it was about ten feet of mud with the top of a tank sticking out of it here and there. If you fell off, it would take a traction engine to pull you out, almost. It was that deep – it was absolute sucking mud. There were cases when one or two men slipped off the duckboards and it took a couple of their comrades to pull them out gradually, inch by inch, when they managed to keep their arms out and they pulled them out, inch by inch, out of the mud and got them on again, on the boards again…
(Imperial War Museums)
During the battle, there was nowhere to go for the wounded or the prisoners taken; they were simply left in groups in shell holes. Edwin Vaughan describes the scene at night:
From other shell holes from the darkness on all sides came the groans and wails of wounded men; faint, long, sobbing moans of agony, and despairing shrieks. It was too horribly obvious that dozens of men with serious wounds must have crawled for safety into new shell holes, and now the water was rising about them and, powerless to move, they were slowly drowning.
(Keegan, 364)
The German artillery units bombarded the attackers with both conventional shells and mustard gas (dichlorethylsulphide). This gas was not as lethal as some other types used in the war, but it was still capable of causing severe injuries by destroying the lining of the air tracts around the nose and mouth, limiting vision, and causing large and painful blisters on the skin. Mustard gas was particularly difficult to avoid since it formed into liquid pools on the ground that remained a hazard for weeks after the initial shell explosions.
The weather improved somewhat, and another Allied push was made on 26 October. The ground remained as difficult to cross as ever. The British and Canadian forces who joined the battle, the eighth and final one of what is collectively termed the Third Battle of Ypres, struggled to make progress, but by 30 October, they had reached the crest of the ridge. The Allies, specifically the Canadian First and Fourth Divisions, did finally capture Passchendaele on 6 November. The achievement was somewhat dampened by the fact that Passchendaele had been totally destroyed by the Allied artillery barrage that had opened the battle. More of Ypres ridge was also captured, but the northernmost part remained in German hands, as did the railway hub Haig had so badly wanted to capture. The German Army still controlled the Gheluvelt plateau, which overlooked this entire area. The Allied operation came to a close on 10 November, and immediately, questions were asked as to what it had all been for.
Aftermath
The Third Battle of Ypres was widely seen as an Allied failure. Strictly speaking, Haig had won the battle, but the gains were minimal and the costs high. The British and British Empire forces had overall suffered between 250,000 and 275,000 casualties (including 70,000 killed) in three months of fighting for no strategic gain. The German armies had sustained around 220,000 casualties. Once again, Haig was criticised for wasting men for the very limited gain of a salient just 5 miles (8 km) deeper into enemy territory. All of this territory would be lost in just three days during the German Spring Offensive of 1918, when the lack of British reserves, men lost at Passchendaele, was telling.
The myth of 'lions led by donkeys,' with ordinary soldiers being the lions and the generals cast as donkeys, is perhaps rather unfair given that commanders like Haig were limited by the weapons at their disposal, the shockingly poor communications of the period, and the lack of sufficient officers and experience within their huge conscripted armies. Haig was no more or less competent than most of his peers on both sides, although one criticism is valid: Haig persistently based his battle plans on an overly optimistic assessment of just what his armies could achieve in the field, and he all too often continued a battle, Passchendaele being a prime example, long after it was clear that the original objectives could not be achieved. Even Haig's principal argument that the battle kept the Germans busy and prevented them from launching an offensive against the mutiny-ridden French armies to the south was spurious, since the German commanders were actually withdrawing divisions to prop up their ailing allies, the Austro-Hungarians, who were fighting the Italians in the Alps.
At least lessons were learned at Passchendaele. Hard-won experience meant that a year later, Haig and the Allied commanders were able to effectively use combined arms – aircraft, artillery, tanks, and infantry – and new tactics like 'bite and hold' and specialised weapons units to inflict a series of telling defeats on Germany that eventually brought victory in the war. In retirement, Haig argued that final victory had only been made possible because of the heavy casualties inflicted on the German Army in battles such as Passchendaele.
